It’s a time of anniversary reflection for me in so many ways. This week, I celebrate another year of marriage to my husband. In one more week, I celebrate my second full year in business. And now, at the start of year three, my partner in life has become my partner in business.
I first met my husband through his byline. Dirk Lammers earned a strong reputation for exceptional reporting and high ethical standards. He reported on the company for which I worked and I remember my boss at Daktronics appreciating a piece he wrote on clear shot clocks that went around the world.
Because Dirk wrote for the Associated Press, his work knew no boundaries. Whether he was writing about something as quintessentially Sioux Falls as SculptureWalk or as iconic as Mount Rushmore, his work was carried by newspapers across the globe. I remember stopping off for an extra day at my aunt’s house to see her and two of my cousins after attending an athletic director conference in Virginia. Ten minutes after arriving at her house, she whipped out a copy of a front-page story on a newly discovered dinosaur species called the Dakotaraptor in the Virginian Pilot with the byline of her new nephew, Dirk Lammers. She was so proud she sent it home with me.
I knew Dirk would someday work again in business. He had been an entrepreneur of a successful e-commerce business that he ran for four years and he has been developing blogs and websites since the earliest days of the Internet.
He’s dedicated, responsible and, thankfully, plenty of fun. I am honored to carry his name. And now I’m thrilled that the business cards that he carries have the name of my company on them.
And since this blog is about accomplishment, I’ll share a few quick tips about how I’m going to work with my spouse and remain happily together.
- Have our own space. We’ve kind of done this before. Just a few weeks after I started my business, the Associated Press moved its South Dakota team into home offices. We worked on separate floors then and continue that today. I love the natural light I get working in an upstairs former bedroom and he loves the cool comfort of his basement office.
- Keep non-work working. We are spouses first, business partners second.
- Keep something for yourself. The obvious choice in naming a business is to start with your surname. I love carrying my husband’s name, but the business I was building was mine. I thought about using my maiden name, but there is an implicit message in that that I did not want to inadvertently send my husband. I picked Cetera. It was right for the time and thankfully it has been right for the business.
I am especially thrilled to welcome Dirk Lammers to Cetera Services and introduce the new and expanded Cetera Services team to our clients and this community.
